Everyone praised Hawking's great achievements. Why can't he win the Nobel Prize? The answer is here.
(The author of this article is Yuan Lanfeng, Ph.D. in Chemistry, China University of Science and Technology, Associate Research Fellow, Hefei National Laboratory of Microscale Material Science, China University of Science and Technology, President of Science and Technology and Strategy Society, and Director of Young Scientists' Social Responsibility Alliance)
2018 March 14, Stephen hawking, a British physicist and a legend in contemporary science, died at the age of 76.
As a scientist, I don't intend to repeat the cliches that are often passed around, but I want to introduce Hawking's actual achievements to the public as clearly and accurately as possible.
The first question is also the most basic one?
How big is Hawking's scientific achievement?
The basic answer is: Hawking is an outstanding scientist. If you say he is a great scientist, I won't object.
However, it is no exaggeration that the media often call him the greatest scientist after Einstein and the greatest scientist in the world. Someone once asked me, "Why does the scientific community recognize Hawking as the greatest scientist after Einstein?" My heart was broken and I couldn't help asking him, "Who told you that this is recognized by the scientific community? The scientific community doesn't think so at all, okay! "
In fact, we can see from an obvious indicator: how can Hawking be the greatest scientist in the world without even winning the Nobel Prize?
This leads to the second question, which is also a frequently asked question:
Why didn't Hawking win the Nobel Prize?
The answer is actually very simple: because his achievements did not reach the level of the Nobel Prize. Not because the Nobel Committee is biased or engaged in politics, but for purely scientific reasons.
This leads to the third question:
What is Hawking's most important scientific research achievement?
To answer this question, it is inevitable to talk about some scientific terms. As Hawking mentioned in A Brief History of Time, every formula will scare away half the readers. However, if you really want to know the answer to this question, I hope you can read the following explanation patiently, and I believe you can get a basic picture from it.
Hawking's research field is mainly cosmology, which is a science, not a philosophy. Yes, studying the universe is not a matter for philosophers now, but for scientists. People no longer think about "whether the universe is finite or infinite" through philosophical debates like "two children debating the sky", but study the universe empirically and quantitatively through observation and theory.
The theory used in cosmology is Einstein's general theory of relativity, to which Hawking has made many contributions. Later, it was found that another basic physical theory "quantum mechanics" parallel to general relativity was needed. Hawking has also made many contributions in this respect, and more importantly.
Hawking has made many scientific achievements. If you must choose one of them, it should be "Hawking radiation". What is Hawking radiation talking about?
As we know, general relativity predicts a celestial body called a "black hole". The mass of a black hole is so great that the gravity around it is so strong that even light can't escape, and other substances slower than light can't escape. Matter outside the black hole may be sucked in by the black hole. It can be seen that black holes, like the legendary fearless brave, can only enter but not exit, which can be said to be "absolutely black".
In daily life, we often use terms such as ecological black hole and financial black hole, which shows how deeply the concept of black hole is rooted in people's hearts. As a modern scientific term, black hole has indeed created a miracle in communication.
However, Hawking suggested that black holes are not only inaccessible, but also not absolutely black!
His reason is this: traditionally, the study of black holes only considers general relativity. But when you add quantum mechanics, you will find that everywhere in space, many pairs of particles and antiparticles are produced in an instant and then annihilated in an instant. What looks like a vacuum is actually an undercurrent. Numerous particles and antiparticles exist and disappear, flowing endlessly. The same is true on the boundary of a black hole.
Well, maybe now the black hole has sucked in the particles generated instantly on the boundary. At the same time, the antiparticle that should have been annihilated with that particle will not be annihilated now. It has appeared in the world as a persistent real particle. From the perspective of an external observer, it is equivalent to a black hole emitting an antiparticle!
According to this theory, black holes do emit matter. This effect is called Hawking radiation. Black holes may not grow up, but they may become smaller and eventually disappear. This is really a great shock to people's ideas!
You will definitely ask the fourth question:
Why didn't Hawking Radiation win the Nobel Prize?
The answer is: this is only a theoretical prediction, which has not been verified by experiments. The selection of the Nobel Prize is very cautious, and we must choose those results that have been verified and recognized. This is why Tu Youyou won the prize decades after artemisinin was discovered, because it had to wait until artemisinin was widely used and became the first choice antimalarial drug in the world. Even if you are so cautious, you will make mistakes from time to time. The Nobel Prize Committee is under great pressure.
In fact, not to mention the revision of the black hole theory such as Hawking radiation. Even the existence of the black hole itself has no direct experimental evidence! Of course, most scientists believe in the existence of black holes because there is a lot of indirect evidence. This situation is like gravitational waves. Before 20 15 directly detected gravitational waves for the first time, most scientists had long believed in the existence of gravitational waves because the indirect evidence was sufficient.
Even though Hawking's radiation has been verified by experiments and Hawking won the Nobel Prize, we can still point out that Hawking's achievement is mainly the improvement within the existing framework, which is good, but it is still at least one level lower than those who put forward the new framework.
Who proposed the new framework? For example, Newton proposed Newtonian mechanics. Maxwell put forward the electromagnetic theory. Einstein put forward special and general relativity. Planck, Heisenberg, Schrodinger and Dirac proposed quantum mechanics. Yang Zhenning put forward gauge field theory. Yes, in the eyes of professionals, Yang Zhenning's scientific achievements are at least one level higher than Hawking's. Of course, there is no disrespect, just an objective analysis, reflecting an industry knowledge.
This leads to the fifth question:
Since Hawking's scientific achievements are not as great as many media say, why is he so famous?
The answer is: Hawking's lofty fame, on the one hand, comes from his outstanding contribution to science, but more from the other three factors.
The first factor is his professional field, cosmology. Although most people lack professional knowledge of cosmology, almost everyone is naturally interested in cosmology and everyone likes to comment on it. In this regard, we can only say that some disciplines are "self-flowing" and some disciplines are not so lucky. For example, my major, theoretical and computational chemistry, most people have never heard of such a subject. Even if the public wants to ask questions, they don't know what to ask.
The second factor is Hawking's legendary illness and the spirit of being physically disabled and determined. Hawking's disease is called "amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" and is usually called "gradually frozen human disease" 20 14 The popular activity "Ice Bucket Challenge" was originally designed to draw people's attention to people gradually freezing to death.
When many people first met Hawking, although they were psychologically prepared, they were still shocked by his disability. This is the case with Wu. He is a student of Hawking in China and a Chinese translator of A Brief History of Time, which Hawking has become accustomed to.
Under the extreme confinement of the body, Hawking's mind is so free that he always cares about the basic problems of the whole universe. What a touching heroic image! There is a line in Hamlet: "Even if I am locked in a shell, I will regard myself as a king with infinite space." This spirit has been fully reflected in Hawking. In fact, after A Brief History of Time, Hawking also wrote a popular science book called The Universe in the Shell.
The third factor is the most interesting, which is Hawking's popular science work. If Hawking's achievements in scientific research are outstanding and there are many people above him, then his achievements in popular science are gods. A Brief History of Time has sold tens of millions worldwide, creating a myth in the history of popular science. This is also a great encouragement to popular science writers all over the world.
This leads to the sixth question:
How about the book A Brief History of Time?
The answer is: I appreciate this book very much and I have learned a lot from it. In fact, although Hawking has tried his best to make so many profound topics easy to understand, the difficulty of these things is there. I'm afraid most readers can't read the book from beginning to end. I have a joke: for most readers, the most worthwhile question is probably: "What chapter did you start with?"
Even so, the most amazing thing is that even if they don't understand it, most people still bite the bullet and read it. Even if they don't read it, they will still buy a book and put it on the shelf. Even if it is cosmetic, using science to cosmetic shows that readers know the greatness of science. To achieve this effect, the role of popular science has been achieved more than half. As the saying goes: hypocrisy is the highest tribute of evil to good!
From the writing point of view, Hawking's writing method has been carefully chosen, which has achieved a rare balance between accuracy and popularity. Even writing such a very hard popular science book is very attractive. China writers have many stories about refining words and sentences, such as "scrutiny", and Hawking has certainly done a lot of such scrutiny. This is worthy of serious understanding and study by popular science writers all over the world.
There is a key point in A Brief History of Time, which is probably difficult for non-professional readers to perceive. In the last few chapters, when introducing the latest progress of cosmology and Hawking's own work, I can see that one of the basic ideas that drives Hawking is his extreme aversion to theism. Hawking doesn't think this issue is unimportant like many scientists, or just generally supports atheism or agnosticism, but very clearly supports atheism and opposes theism. How clear is it? Many of his studies are aimed at expelling the idea of God more thoroughly. In this sense, Hawking is not only an atheist, but also a fighting atheist, just like Fan Zhen, Diderot and Richard Dawkins in history.
A typical example is an important book in his later years, Boundless Boundary Conditions, which means that the boundary conditions of the universe are "borderless". From this, we can naturally answer the question "What was before the Big Bang", because space-time is a four-dimensional sphere, just like the surface of the earth, and none of the points is a boundary, and none of them is special. The Big Bang was like the South Pole of the Earth. You think it is special only because the coordinate system you use regards it as the southernmost point. In fact, it is completely artificial. If you change the coordinate system, you will find that this point is in the same position as other points. So there was nothing before the big bang, because there was no "before" in the big bang, just like starting from the South Pole and never going south again. I'm sorry, I can't explain this problem in more detail here because of the space limitation, such as what the word "time and space" means. Interested readers can refer to my related articles, such as Gravitational Wave.
The seventh question is:
Hawking has often made some bizarre or unreliable remarks in recent years. Did he become a magic stick? Or is it controlled by a group behind it and become the puppet of these people?
The answer is: no.
More than half of Hawking's so-called unreliable remarks are fabricated by the media, and Hawking has never said it. These disinformation media are really despicable, and this stupid hype can only reflect the low level of knowledge and morality of these people.
Hawking did say something, even if it was not completely correct, but at least it was a serious speech. It is normal for some people to disagree with these statements, but it is too much for them to think that they are magic sticks or puppets.
Hawking or any famous scientist should neither be deified nor demonized, but should be treated objectively and calmly. If you think what he said is reasonable, please refer to it. If you don't think it makes sense, don't listen. Why bother to instill conspiracy theories? After all, a great man becomes a great man not because he did something wrong, but because he did something right.
There is no doubt that Hawking has become a great man of our time.
Liu has a short story called, in which Hawking appears. This novel tells that human beings have built a super accelerator around the whole earth, called "Einstein Equator". When the accelerator was about to start, an alien suddenly appeared and stopped us. Aliens told people on earth that this accelerator is too powerful, which may lead to vacuum decay and destroy the whole universe. His task is to monitor the intelligent life of the whole universe and eliminate this danger.
Earth people ask: when did you start to notice the earth?
The answer of the troubleshooter is: 370,000 years ago, 10 primitive people looked up at the starry sky and exceeded the warning threshold, showing full curiosity about the universe.
Earth people ask: Isn't it said that the early warning system will only give an alarm when there is a civilization that can produce a creation-level energy process?
The answer of the danger eliminator is that when life realizes the existence of the mystery of the universe, it is only one step away from its final solution. For example, life on earth took more than 4 billion years to realize the existence of the mystery of the universe for the first time, and that moment was less than 400 thousand years before you built Einstein's equator, and the most critical acceleration period of this process was less than 500 years. If the primitive man stared at the universe for a few minutes and saw a gem, then your so-called whole human civilization just bent down to pick it up.
What Liu said here is thought-provoking. Curiosity is a human nature and cannot be stopped. Through science, the greatest cause of mankind, people can still enjoy spiritual freedom even if they are confined in the shell.
Pascal's famous saying is our most appropriate commemoration of Hawking:
"Thought has shaped people's greatness.
Man is just a reed, the most fragile thing in nature; But he is a thinking reed. You don't need the whole universe to take up arms to destroy him; One breath and one drop of water are enough to kill him. However, even if the universe destroyed him, man is still much more noble than what killed him; Because he knew he was going to die, and he knew the benefits the universe brought him, but the universe knew nothing about it.
Therefore, all our dignity lies in our thoughts. It is because of it, not because of the space and time we can't fill, that we must improve ourselves. So, try to think it over; This is a moral principle. "